The Handwritten Newspapers Project

Publication History:

Place of Publication:  Potosi, Nevada (then in northwest corner of New Mexico Territory)

Volume and Issue Data:  Vol. 1, No. 1, Feb. 19, 1861-?

Size and Format:  Unknown

Editor/Publisher:  J. A. Talbott

Title Changes and Continuation:  None

General Description & Notes:

According to Lingenfelter and Gash, editor J.A. Talbott, a former printer from Calaveras, came to Potosi following a silver discovery in 1860 without printing equipment.  Talbott justified publishing the East of the Nevada in its first issue:  “The manifold wants of our community rendering it necessary, owing to our isolated position, shut out from those sources of information and instruction that is as familiar as ‘household words’ in a settled community, renders it necessary to have a vehicle of thought amongst us by which an interchange of intelligence should be disseminated, questions discussed, wit circulated, and those precious gems preserved, without which ‘this world would be a void.’  For this end, and under our peculiar circumstances, our sheet is issued.”  The paper included a description of the principal mines of the district, a notice of the construction a theater and other local news.  The paper probably ran only a few issues, since the silver boom in Potosi was exhausted by October 1860, and Talbott joined the rush to Holcomb Valley.

The short life of the Miner’s Voice included competition with another local handwritten newspaper, the Potosi Nix Cum Rouscht, edited by Capt. J.E. Stevens, president of the Colorado Mining Company and founder of Potosi.

Information Sources:

Bibliography:  Robert F. Karolevitz, Newspapering in the Old West:  A Pictorial History of Journalism and Printing on the Frontier (New York:  Bonanza Books, 1969), p. 119; Richard E. Lingenfelter, The Newspapers of Nevada (San Francisco:  John Howell-Books, 1964), 66-67; Richard E. Lingenfelter and Karen R. Gash, The Newspapers of Nevada (Reno:  University of Nevada Press, 1984), pp. 170-171.

Index Sources:  None

Locations:  No issues located, but Feb. 19, 1861 issue (Vol. 1, No. 1) quoted in Los Angeles Star, March 9, 1861.